First, the good news—Ian Felice, frontman of the jaw-droppingly wonderful The Felice Brothers, has just released his debut solo album, In the Kingdom of Dreams.
Another piece of even better news—his solo jaunt does not spell the break-up of the Catskill Mountains-based Felice Brothers, whom I consider to be perhaps the finest band in America. If they were to call it a day, I don’t know what I’d do. Go to the nearest roadhouse and tell the barkeep to put some whisky in my whisky, probably. As the guy says in Animal House, some situations are so utterly unacceptable they require a really stupid and futile response on somebody’s part. And to paraphrase another guy in Animal House, I’m just the guy to do it.
Now for the not-so-great news. Half of the album’s 10 tracks, which were recorded in Felice’s childhood hometown of Palenville, NY over the course of four frigid days in February 2017, are irredeemably downcast, which can make for a tough listen unless you’re suicidal, in which case this just might be the perfect soundtrack for perfecting your noose-knotting technique. And the other five, while lovely, are anything but chipper.
Don’t get me wrong—In the Kingdom of Dreams is still an extraordinary piece of work, even if does lack those raucous shouts of pure joy that have made every Felice Brothers LP I own a celebration of being alive. But what are you going to do? Based on Felice’s comments about the project, I gather it constituted a therapeutic means of working through some tough personal issues, and if the results are far from upbeat, they nevertheless offer the listener a dark but revelatory glimpse into the soul of a very complex and brilliant artist. Besides, it’s not as if Felice hasn’t written his fair share of brooding songs in the past; indeed, one could argue they’re more the norm than not.
In the Kingdom of Dreams is a stripped-down, singer-songwriter affair—fellow Felice Brothers James Felice (keyboards) and Josh Rawson (bass) may be along for the ride, along with producer-drummer Simone Felice, who left the band back in 2009—but with the exception of brother James they largely stay in the background. The general analogy would be Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska; the minimalistic approach to accompaniment gives Ian the chance to explore the silence between the notes and the opportunity to cast the spotlight on his lyrics, which are astounding as usual.
The album’s highlights include the sublime and transcendent title track, which rises to exultant heights and is every bit as lovely as such Felice Brothers’ classics as “Forever Green,” “Bird on Wing,” and “Wonderful Life,” to pick three songs out of a battered fedora. And then there’s the doleful but sweet “Mt. Despair,” which slowly builds to a climax that culminates in a lover’s leap into nothingness. It sounds like a bummer and it is, but like I always say, there is no joy unalloyed with sorrow. “Road to America” is the LP’s only uptempo track, and starts with the wonderful lines, “Well my shoes are filling with rain/White picket fences aflame/Covered wagons, hopscotch, and gum/What’s that sound?/It’s the Velvet Underground.” The boy has a way with words, he does.
And he really shows off his mad poetic skills on “21st Century,” a hilarious but sympathetic song about mental illness that opens with the lines, “Well the aliens landed on election day/And they stole your mother’s lingerie/I went off my medication/A rider of the revelation.” Our singer faces that psychotic’s stark choice: “It’s an anti-psychotic bore/Or Oprah feeds a minotaur/That’s a hard line to toe/When there’s no way to go.” “The joke is on me,” he concludes, but the poor fellow isn’t laughing.
“Water Street” marks a turn towards Springsteenesque working class social realism; it tells the story of a fellow trapped in a marriage in a house at the end of Water Street, and Felice has stated that it was inspired by his fears of approaching fatherhood. The song’s narrator sings that his father left his family when he was a child; he swears he won’t do the same, but he’s scared of the price he’ll pay. “Signs of Spring” is as lovely as a good Neil Young piano ballad, and boasts better lyrics. No, wait; what it reminds me of more than even good old Neil is the late Mark Linkous of Sparklehorse, who could bruise you with his words and make you like it. In any event it’s a great song, a song that will keep me coming back to the LP whenever I want to revel in the sheer joyful anguish of drawing breath. As for “In Memoriam” it’s a folk treasure about the death of Felice’s stepfather and utilizes game show Wheel of Fortune as a central metaphor to wondrous success.
“Will I Ever Reach Laredo” reminds me of nothing so much as a Crooked Fingers song, and if Eric Bachmann’s your guy you’re guaranteed to think its just swell. “Ten to One” is a lugubrious number about running into the Grim Reaper at the intersection of life and death, where the “sickle-shaped clouds hang high” and the dark one can be found “beheading daisies.” Can this really be a countdown to suicide instead of ecstasy? I think so. I’m as gloomy a Gus as ever trod this earth, but this one is a bit too bleakly haunted even for me. As for the closing track “In the Final Reckoning,” it boasts some bright electric piano by brother James but is otherwise every bit as unremittingly lugubrious as “Ten to One.” And its melody doesn’t do much for me either.
Many folks are bound to love this album, and I can understand why. But speaking just for myself (I like to speak for other people, but it tends to annoy them), I dearly miss the sheer unbridled exuberance of such Felice Brothers’ songs as “Frankie’s Gun,” “Take This Bread,” “Run Chicken Run,” and “Cherry Licorice,” to say nothing of such borderline surreal tunes as “Back in the Dancehalls,” “Love Me Tenderly,” and “Fire at the Pageant.” And it is for this reason and this reason only that I don’t place In the Kingdom of Dreams at the same exulted level as I do the LPs of the Felice Brothers. That said, it’s a brooding and meditative listen, and proof positive that you can indeed alchemize sorrow into a rejuvenating balm for the soul.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A-
